With a March 1 deadline to reach an agreement on tariffs, U.S. and Chinese negotiators began a new round of talks in Washington on Wednesday. Those negotiations come just one day after top intelligence officials warned that China is among the most serious threats to the country. That assessment must underpin U.S. strategy and objectives in trade talks.
In remarks before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and FBI Director Christopher Wray, along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and other top intelligence officials, outlined the dangers posed by China, along with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and terrorist organizations. Their testimony comes alongside the release of a written report of their findings.
In his testimony, Coats pointed to China, and its growing relationship with Russia, as a major security concern. Among descriptions of Beijing’s growing weapons of mass destruction capabilities, cyberwar, military interests in space, and other threats, there is a clear link to the unfair trade practices at the heart of the U.S.-initiated trade war.
In his testimony, for example, he drew a clear link between China’s ability to rival the U.S. industrial espionage: “China had a remarkable rise in capabilities that are stunning. A significant amount of that was achieved through stealing information of our companies.”
The report goes on to explain how China has exploited trade policies to its advantage, arguing that “China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means.”
On Beijing’s strategy on acquiring new technology, Coats explained that the regime “takes a multifaceted, long-term, whole-of-government approach to foreign technology acquisition and indigenous technology acquisition and and indigenous technology development.”
Those are not minor charges. Taken together these arguments indicate that Beijing’s emergence as a defense concern to the U.S. is, at least in part, built on its exploitative trade practices.
That has serious global consequences. As, in the eyes of intelligence, China is not just a threat for the United States but to the entire modern world order: “Chinese leaders will increasingly seek to assert China’s model of authoritarian capitalism as an alternative — and implicitly superior — development path abroad, exacerbating great-power competition that could threaten international support for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”
Not only has Beijing built its authoritarian capitalism success on trade theft, manipulation and state-led development, along with the social and political control that entails, but that is a model that China seeks to export elsewhere at the expense of open societies and free markets.
Those concerns get at the very heart of the Chinese economic and political model — the same model that allows the ruling Chinese Communist Party to retain its grip on power. Beijing will not give those up for even the best trade deal that Washington has to offer.
For negotiators meeting with their Chinese counterparts, that means that the talks this week, and in the lead up to March 1, will not be the last.
Washington and Beijing have plenty of differences to resolve and, hopefully, they will first look to diplomacy before warships. Negotiators must prepare for that diplomatic reality by approaching current talks not only as an opportunity to work out the first steps of a deal to end tariffs, but also as a chance to set the stage for ongoing communications on much more difficult issues.
After all, the consequences of failing to keep diplomacy at the forefront of U.S.-China relations were made clear in recent defense reports on Beijing’s capabilities. And a conflict with Beijing is one that even the most hawkish policy makers should find an unacceptable alternative.
So, for now, cheers to our negotiators — they certainly have their work cut out for them.
